Timing

• Pausing the game (with ingame pause, P), does not stop the timer.
• Quickloading reloads the time played for the map to what it was at the point saved.
• F3 does not speed up the timer, even though the game runs faster. Using F3 should be an independent category.

Main strategies

Castle is the best spell in the game for killing most, but not all monsters. However, there are numerous situation where you need to build up your castle. You can raze your castle again by pressing Shift+L.

Sufficient mana must be gathered before starting mana gathering missions (see bug note). Planning on which mana to get and optimizing balloon routes (at least on the earlier levels) is crucial. (And no, there is no way to control your balloons.)

When the mission objective is to kill all monsters of a particular kind, it usually cares about all monsters of that kind that are alive at the moment. There are often ways to spawn new monster of that kind, which will then be included in the objective, so try to avoid that as much as possible.

Bugs

Fast-Quitting

When you have completed all missions and is asked to fly to the exit, you can just press esc, hit confirm and leave it immediately. The game will consider you to have beaten the level. This is probably not a bug. A tiny bit unfortunate, since some levels are almost built around exiting the level (looking at you, level 6).

Mana mission skip

Mana gathering missions are set up so that you need to gather a certain % of the level’s current max mana in your castle. How far the castle’s mana meter is from it’s maximum is an indication of this. Usually when you start such a mission, the game spawns monsters, which raises the total amount of mana on the level, and by consequence, raise the total amount of mana you need to pass the mission. However, it spawns these monsters after checking your mana. So if you have more % mana then required when you start the mission, you’ll not only pass it immediately, but the total amount of mana you needed was less than if you had not. You should always aim to do this, as it speeds up the mana missions, which are a time consuming part of the game. Not entirely sure this is a bug either (the first Cymmerian level talks about it explicitly).

Quicksave / quickload

Aren’t free of weird effects. In particular it seems that mana missions can be skipped by playing through the map normally, and then quickloading back to an earlier point when the mana mission just got available. Even if you don’t have enough mana, the mission can be passed (observed once). Abusing this bug and using the in-game timer, should be considered its own category, if it should be allowed at all. (There would be no real-time restrictions on such a run.)

Castle razing

By building your castle next to other buildings, and then, with some trickery, upgrading it, you can raze the other buildings instantly. Noted to be useful on level 2, 10, 11 and 16.

Castle digging

By being super smurfy, you can get your castle to raze indestructible walls. This seems to work best when building a completely new castle (level 1) and somehow tricking the collision detection (hit something!) for the castle projectile to still build instead of being prevented. This is useful on level 12 and possible on 25.

Diagonal movement

As in a lot of other old games, moving diagonally has higher speed than just moving straight forward. Because there is a maximum turning velocity (mouse control in mc2 is not like in regular fps:s) this is hard to utilize perfectly while still doing other tasks. The speed up spell seems to affect only forward and backwards movement, so when using it it’s sufficient to cast it first while going straight forward, and then add a strafe key and a slight counter angle with the mouse.

Crashing

(of the bad variety.) The game is more unstable on high resolution, and will frequently crash in certain situations.

Mana mechanics

On any given time, the all the mana in a map are in one of these forms:

• Monster-bound (that is, inside any living monster)
• Freeform, these are all the balls of mana everywhere
• Balloon-bound
• Castle-bound
• Building-bound
• Finally, each wizard has a global 1000 mana (which is immediately bound by any castle as soon as one is built.)

The castle meter

• The full length of the meter is all the mana that exists on the map. As the mana on a map increases over time (because of spawning monsters and freeform mana), the "density" of mana per pixel in the meter increases. In other words, there is no fixed length in the meter for "a level 6 castle filled with mana", because it varies depending on the current total mana of the level.
• The non-greyed amount is how much mana you have from buildings+your global 1000+mana stored in the castle.
• The greyed amount is how much additional mana that your castle currently can hold.
• Each new level of the castle increases it's holding maximum.

If you somehow gain more mana beyond the maximum (a balloon dropping too much, or possessing buildings when full), this mana is thrown out in possessed freeform around your castle. The last castle level has no maximum capacity.

• It is the absolute amount of mana that is in your castle (not it's level) that determines whether a spell is enabled or not. Note that mana from buildings does not count in, they affect the castle mana meter and your personal mana meter, but are not technically in your castle!
• It is the relative amount of mana, compared to all the mana in the level, that determines whether you pass a mana mission or not. Because of this, the mission indicator never moves even if new monsters are spawned (and the absolute amount required just increased).

The balloons meter

When a balloon meter is filled, the balloon heads back to the castle, and never before that (unless there is no more mana to pick up). The balloon has no limit in it's storage however, and can carry well over when it's meter has been filled. But this additional amount will always come from a large ball of mana which is the last thing it picks up before heading home. The balloons soft limit is 10.000 mana.

The player’s meter

The player's mana meter (not the spell meters) shows the player's mana pool, consisting of unspent (white) and spent (grey) mana. The meter shows the relation between how much mana the player has and all the mana on the map. (So when the player has possessed all mana on the map, the meter is full.)

The spell meter

A spell's mana meter show how many times it can be used given the current amount of unspent mana. 1 white pixel is one usage.